Ligabue
Lambrusco Coltelli Rose & Pop Corn

I will therefore resume the discussion from where I left it, that is, for those who might not know, from the article I wrote and published here a couple of weeks ago about Ligabue's first album, although, as I have already clarified, my intention is not to review a particular album, but rather to comment on the entire artistic journey of the rocker from Correggio. To this end, in any case, the road I will follow to complete this project will be that of record releases.

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Luciano Ligabue, who already in 1991 released, once again with WEA, his second album, had now embarked on the road to success through a fast track. Slightly superior to the first in terms of recording quality, "Lambrusco, Coltelli, Rose & Pop Corn" immediately presents itself as very similar to the previous work, both from a structural point of view (eleven tracks with a similar rock/slow alternation) and from the thematic point of view, while the sound moves away a bit from the suggestions evoked by the first "Ligabue", thanks to the attempt made by Clandestino to break free from the post-'80s sounds to embrace the dictates of the nascent grunge.

It is still the man on the street, the one who was not destined to "live in certain times and spaces", who sings feeling "entitled or perhaps obligated to dream" ("Lambrusco e popcorn"), who spends the evenings with friends in some abandoned basement, strumming a stolen Gibson, against the backdrop of an unlikely yet evocative futuristic scenario ("Anime in plexiglass"), or who, between a bluff and a dealt hand, reflects on the analogies between the poker game he is playing and his life ("Con queste facce qui").

Deliberately leaving out a "track-by-track" analysis of the album, I will limit myself to mentioning, in addition to those already mentioned in the previous review, "Salviamoci la pelle" and "Libera nos a malo", just a few of the most significant tracks of the album such as "Camera con vista sul deserto", a well-crafted blues with slide guitar and harmonica, "Sarà un bel souvenir", a moving and simple ballad that starts only with Ligabue's voice accompanied by his acoustic guitar before exploding into Cottafavi's solo that preludes to the final crescendo chorus, and especially "Urlando contro il cielo", the masterpiece of the album along with the other gem "Libera nos a malo" (songs like these Ligabue will never write again); a tense and syncopated hard rock with a stadium chant, an adrenaline-pumping, powerful and unique anthem, a force of nature that I certainly rank among what I consider to be the five or six best songs in the entire repertoire of the Romagnolo singer (in random order: "Marlon Brando è sempre lui", "Libera nos a malo", "Certe Notti", "Bambolina e barracuda", "Non è tempo per noi").

As I said, the primitive roughness of Ligabue is still felt in this album, that of someone who grew up in the cold fog of the Po Valley, in the village of the province of Reggio Emilia, among the respect for the values and customs of his land (work, factory, countryside, marriage, bar, Lambrusco, cards, soccer, etc...) and the aspiration to join a world (for him) as new as that of rock, light-years away from the Emilian tradition (even though, to be precise, it was actually another town in the province of Modena, Zocca, that gave birth to Vasco Rossi, the other great rocker of our country) and more generally from the Italian one.

However, this is precisely what my first objection and perplexity are based on regarding the entire poetic proposal by Ligabue. Already at the time (let us remember, we are a couple of years after the release of "Lambrusco coltelli rose & pocorn", on the brink of 1993), he could have been criticized for singing stories and situations from which rock, WEA, Bertoli, his own creativity had already irreparably distanced him. I will explain better: these songs, when they were published, were not new, but rather pieces that Ligabue had had in the drawer for years. This partly explains the commercial "flop" (compared to the expectations raised by the success of the previous two, mind you) of the third album, for which I will refer you to my next publication on our beloved DeBaser.

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